LibGuides: History Hub: Building Critical Research Skills

The Brown University Library facilitates and supports critical research practices that ask how bias, power, and uneven access to resources are at work in the labor of scholarship.

Consider reflecting on the following set of questions and resources to develop and integrate critical perspectives into your research plans:

Reflecting on Critical History

What makes a source authoritative? Who decides?

"Authority is Constructed and Contextual," Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. ACRL, 2016.
"Re-examining Authority," Frame: Authority Is Constructed and Contextual, PALNI Consortium, October 27, 2022.

Is History an objective discipline?

Keisha N. Blain, "Black Historians Know There’s No Such Thing as Objective History." The New Republic, September 9, 2022.
Brooke Gladstone and Tiya Miles, "A Historian Reckons With Gaps in the Archives." On the Media, March 3, 2023.

What counts as historical evidence?

Mia Mingus, "On Collaboration: Starting with Each Other." Leaving Evidence blog, August 3, 2012.
Tara Bynum, “Cesar Lyndon’s Lists, Letters, and a Pig Roast: A Sundry Account Book.” Early American Literature 53.3 (2018): 839–849.

What does it mean to "decolonize knowledge"?

Eve Tuck and K.Wayne Yang, "Decolonization is not a Metaphor," Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1-40.
McCracken, Krista, and Skylee-Storm Hogan. “Laughter Filled the Space: Challenging Euro-Centric Archival Spaces.” The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion 5.1 (2021): 97–110.

How do dynamics of power shape citational practice?

"Why Citational Practice?" Teaching Citational Practice.
Shanelle E. Kim, "The Paths We Were Told To Follow" A Citational Practice Worksheet for Students." Teaching Citational Practice 1 (2021): Progressive Pedagogies for Humanities Research and Citation.
Annabel L. Kim, “The Politics of Citation.” Diacritics 48, no. 3 (2020): pp. 4–9.
Sara Ahmed, "Feminist Shelters," Feminist Killjoy Blog, December 30, 2015.

How is bias embedded into knowledge-making?

Adam J. P. Gaudry. “Insurgent Research.” Wicazo Sa Review 26, no. 1 (2011): 113–36.
Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99.

How can we ground historical research in critical methods of inquiry?

Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Wallach Scott, and Gary Wilder. “Theses on Theory and History.” History of the Present 10, no. 1 (2020): 157–165.